


swimming in a mirror

by Violet_DeLights



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Drama & Romance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Jealousy, Johnny and V live, Language of Flowers, Mutual Pining, Nomad V (Cyberpunk 2077), Not Actually Unrequited Love, Not Beta Read, Rocker Johnny, Romantic Angst, Sappy Ending, Soft Johnny Silverhand, brief mention of in game violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:07:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29214648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violet_DeLights/pseuds/Violet_DeLights
Summary: Now, as she climbs to her shaky feet and heads to the window, Johnny glitches into sight at her side, and she hears him mention the sharp something near her heart. Figures. She’d always made sure not to get attached, not to develop so much as a crush.She finally falls in love and it’s with a dead, asshole rocker boy, whose engram is trying to erase her.Fucking nova.(Hanahaki Disease AU)
Relationships: Female V/Johnny Silverhand, Johnny Silverhand/V
Comments: 6
Kudos: 66





	swimming in a mirror

_Sometimes all I think about is you_

_Late nights in the middle of June_

_Heat waves been faking me out_

_Can't make you happier now_

V feels the first inkling that something has gone wrong in that hotel room at the Pistis Sophia.

With the new weight of the dog tags around her neck and a conversation that had delved deeper than any she’d ever had (with the exception of Jackie, but even then there had been certain topics they’d always avoided; the wounds too fresh to reopen), Johnny asks if she’d take a bullet for him and that’s when she feels it. Something jagged and tearing nestles in the very center of her.

Dammit, but she’s been so careful all her life.

Never letting many people get close to her, even when she was on the road with the Bakkers. But V hadn’t always been a Nomad. She had grown up in Arizona, on the plains, amongst the stifling heat and scarce vegetation that grew in her small town. She’d had a normal house, and a mother and father that loved her and then, when she was seventeen, a drifter had come through and decided to stay awhile and she’d noticed her mother suddenly putting on dresses she hadn’t worn in years. Frilly, velvet laced shifts that she hadn’t pulled out since her marriage. How she suddenly had to put on lipstick before she’d leave the house. The expensive perfume she needed, despite the fact that her father’s income had always been modest.

And then there were the flowers.

V didn’t quite realize, at the time, what was happening to her mother, even when she saw her leave the house at all hours of the day and night, drifting by as though she were already a ghost, a dreamy smile on her face.

But she found the first blossom nestled at the bottom of the trash can in the bathroom, when she’d accidentally tipped it over on her way to the bath.

It stunned her, this bit of wild beauty, lying tucked away in the garbage. It was a light pink, slightly damp, as she cradled it close to her, the outer petals tinged with red. V hadn’t understood then what she would come to know later. That it was already too late for her mother.

More and more she would find these lovely buds and blooms, hidden in unlikely places. There was a red one, fallen on the ground by the trash cans outside, its petals jagged and soft, the inside stained a much darker crimson.

A white one, down the garbage disposal at the sink, which had bits of ruby coloring at the ends of its petals.

A yellow one that resembled the other two, by her mother’s bedside, dropped and hastily shoved underneath the bed, surrounded by petals in a variety of different, blindingly pure colors, in a world where neon had replaced anything natural.

All of them where speckled with red, sometimes brown.

And when her mother finally passed, three months later, and two months since the drifter had skipped town in the middle of the night, was when she was finally told what ailed her.

They called it _Hanahaki’s Disease_ , or the _Lover’s Curse_. Legend had it that somewhere back in the great Arasaka family tree, who were known even by people in the middle of nowhere, that there had been a beautiful girl named Hanahaki who fell in love with a man from another country. Her father forbade the marriage and so, in a fit of desperate grief when her beloved then married another woman, she set down a curse so that anyone stuck in unrequited love, such as her, would know her pain. Flowers would sprout, would grow deep in a person’s core the longer that love was not returned until it finally killed them.

V didn’t put much stock into legends, thought they were fanciful bullshit fed to the masses to keep them complacent, much like religion had in times gone by, but there was no denying the disease itself.

V had attended the funeral, had sat next to her father, a shell of himself since the passing, his hair gone grey from stress and his back bowed under the weight of the world. Had sat through the service and eulogy, small as it was. And had been enraged when she saw her mother lying still in the casket, hands demurely clasped together over her heart, a serene smile quirking her pale lips. That rage had carried her through the next day, packing her meager belongings, and the next when she hit the road. It was a hot ember burning in her gut when she joined the Bakkers and tentatively welcomed a new kind of family into her life and it was a smothered flame when she occasionally took someone to bed, only to slip away come morning, feeling more empty than before.

Now, as she climbs to her shaky feet and heads to the window, Johnny glitches into sight at her side, and she hears him mention the sharp something near her heart and thinks _Well, shit._

Because she’d always made sure not to get attached, not to develop so much as a crush, her mother’s bloodless face seared in her mind’s eye even if her and her father’s names were purposefully forgotten.

But now, well, she’s accumulated a multitude of hurts over the years and this is the one she’s always dreaded the most.

“Doubt that’s ever going away.”

She finally falls in love and it’s with a dead, asshole rocker boy, whose engram is trying to erase her.

Fucking nova.

~*~*~

V coughs up the first petal that evening as she’s taking a shower in her apartment. Asshole he may be, but Johnny has been surprisingly accommodating about leaving her alone when she needs to be. _Which is part of why_ , she thinks wryly, _I'm probably in this predicament in the first place._

Her throat burns as she hacks and then it slides across her tongue and out onto her palm, quickly drenched in the spray of hot water. She takes only a few precious minutes to study it, the oval shape, the bright pink of it (and she can’t think of her mother again, not now, not here, or she will fucking lose it) and then deliberately shreds it into small pieces to wash away down the drain.

Strange as sharing a body with someone is, sharing a mind is infinitely weirder and V can feel him in there with her when she concentrates. So far, they are still separate, like two people sharing an apartment complex that has thin walls. He’s there but he’s _different_ from her and it’s easy to see the parts of themselves that clash and mesh as they fight for control over her failing body. With this in mind she breathes deeply, as Misty taught her, for meditation and, having only a vague sense of what she’s doing, she pictures a mental wall and takes her time building it up, brick by careful brick, making sure there are no gaps in her defense.

She as good as promised him back in that hotel room that she would fight to stay alive. He can’t know now that even with him gone she’d die anyway.

V sighs as she shuts off the water and dries, wrapping the towel around herself. She’s unsurprised to see Johnny leaning against the wall opposite as she steps out from the bathroom.

“What the hell is that about?” he demands suspiciously, his eyes peering at her over the rim of his aviators.

She doesn’t pretend ignorance, even though she could, could string him along and play dumb until he drops the subject and, perhaps, she could have before. Before the conversation at the hotel, before he revealed that he cares about her and before the coughing started, even now an uncomfortable tickle at the back of her throat.

“You’re literally taking over my body, Johnny. Is it so much to ask for some things to remain private? To keep some things to myself?” she asks him, the words tasting like ash on her tongue as she lies.

There’s a pause and then—“You’ve never kept anythin’ from me before,” he says quietly, head turned away, jaw clenched.

And, _god_ , but V is so tired already, knowing how much effort this will take to keep from him, but knowing she’ll do it anyway.

“Sorry,” she offers, just as quietly, standing there before him with literally everything else stripped away from her, dripping onto the carpet as her fingers clench at the top of the towel nervously.

He looks at her then, just stares at her in the sudden hush that falls between them, as though he senses that there is a gravity to this moment, even if he doesn’t know why. She thinks she can make out a hint of concern there in the tightened corners of his eyes, even past his dark shades, and how his lips thin.

But in the next second he flickers away and she stumbles to her bed and drags herself across it.

 _Promise you won’t regret this,_ echoes in her mind and, she bitterly thinks, _he’s not wrong._ Because she doesn’t, despite everything. With so many years behind her, she’s seen some of the worst this world has to offer and almost all of it available in concentrated quantities in Night City. And if she couldn’t have companionship then she had wanted to be remembered. To go out in a blaze of glory so that her name, her memory, would be whispered reverently in every bar across the states. It wouldn’t have been a bad way to go, hollow though it was of any real substance.

But now, with her throat still burning and a pleasant warmth suffusing her when she thinks of Johnny, she thinks there are worse ways to go than just this.

~*~*~

When V wakes in the morning, it only takes her a minute to push past the ache in her skull that is ever present, a remnant of relic malfunctions, to disregard the spittle of blood clinging to her lips and the small droplets by her head, and to get up and dressed. Luckily, it seemed there were no new petals to discover this morning and the blood was only a byproduct of her body fighting the chip in her head.

She never thought she’d be grateful for that but, as Johnny phases into being next to her as she finishes tugging her boots on, she is thankful that she won't have to hide much yet, or bullshit him more. Anytime she coughed now it would be easy to play it off as a relic attack. All she would have to do is keep the petals themselves hidden in her clothes or something while she was out and he would never know.

Then, hopefully, V could solve this whole mess by getting them untangled, freeing him from her, from being a captive of Arasaka’s in name if not in body, and then she could pass peacefully, maybe with Mama Welles, Judy, and Misty by her side.

She’s surreptitious as she clicks on her messages on her desktop, quickly switching over to the net when she sees Johnny crouch to stare at Mr. Nibbles out of the corner of her eye.

The first few websites she tries are bust, mainly interested in trying to charge her an exorbitant amount of money to have a couple of measly weeds masquerading as flowers delivered. Finally, she gets a site dedicated to the meaning of plants and tries to absorb its contents as quickly as possible. Luckily, being in the merc business means you have to have a good head for information gathering and retention, or else she’d be fucked, because she never knew just how many flowers there were, back when anyway.

She’s just started to navigate away when she hears the fuzzing of code come to life by ear and then Johnny saying, from right by her shoulder, “The fuck are you lookin’ at flowers for, V?”

V is very careful not to startle or give herself away, wouldn’t go very far in her line of work if she was prone to such tells, and nonchalantly closes out the pages.

“Dunno,” she muses aloud. “Think it would be nice to go somewhere new after this. Place that doesn’t have so much chrome everywhere, y’know?”

She can practically feel his eyes boring into her, his confusion slipping across the borders of their mind clearly.

“Yeah, sure,” he replies dubiously. But in the next second he’s telling her what she should change in her outfit, seeing as he’s the one who’s going to be wearing their meat suit, as he puts it.

She can feel him dismiss her in the next moment and she takes a careful breath, suppressing the urge to cough, as she listens to him.

~*~*~

V makes it to the _Afterlife_ and pops the pill, feeling herself fade out, shunted to a corner of their mind.

“Bout fuckin’ time,” she hears.

And then all is dark.

~*~*~

She gets glimpses of shots knocked back, a tattoo parlor and the burning press of a needle, a scantily clad girl pressed against her, and the lance of pain all over that comes with a car accident wrenching your body forward with its momentum.

She wishes she could feel betrayed, could feel angry, but mostly she just feels resigned.

And then she fades away once more.

~*~*~

V wakes in a dirty hotel room with Rogue straddling a chair by her bedside. She groans, the light of the room setting off a pounding headache. Her mouth tastes like something died in it, her skin feels sticky with dried sweat, and she aches all over, her shoulder throbbing from where a seatbelt must have cut into it.

She can barely hear Rogue as they discuss the night before and she promises to call and leaves. Johnny pops into existence, laying across the kitchen bar top, and she grates out some sarcastic quip before she’s running for the toilet.

The door slides locked behind her and she sinks to her knees, automatically gagging, a spurt of amber fluid dribbling past her lips to hit the water. Her hands grasp the sides of the seat, clenching until her knuckles are white as she wretches. More and more comes up with bits of undigested food and then a few petals drop from her tongue and suddenly she’s choking, not on bile, but on more and more petals.

When the onslaught finally dissipates, she’s left gasping for breath, clutching a handful of slimy petals as she gazes down at them dispassionately. They are large, ruffled near the top, and a soft purple.

Willow.

 _Sadness,_ she thinks bitterly. _Yeah, didn’t need a reminder for that._

When V finally makes her way back into the room on shaky legs, Johnny is no longer sprawled comfortably on the counter but instead sitting in Rogue’s vacated seat.

“You alright there, choom?” he asks, and there’s a tightness in his voice that she would think means guilt if she wasn’t so done with his shit.

“Fine,” she bites out, and then grabs her scattered weapons and backpack and deltas out of there.

~*~*~

V picks up a few gigs in the meantime, waiting on Rogue’s call. Johnny’s commentary on each of these side jobs is as colorful as always and she finds herself laughing a few times before she can stop herself, making him smirk knowingly at her each time. She berates him as they tail Pepe’s wife, even though she’s biting her lip to keep from laughing. Tears spring to her eyes regardless and his voice becomes more over the top with each line, as though he can tell she’s on the verge of cracking. It becomes gravely and rough and then she’s biting her lip for an entirely different reason as a bolt of heat pulses between her legs.

She shifts uncomfortably as they continue to walk and checks her mental walls. Thankfully, they are as strong as ever, and, while there is a bit of bleed through as they continue to interact, it seems he didn’t catch that bit of _wanting_ that exuded from her.

V had known, as they got closer, even if it was reluctantly, that she had fallen for Johnny because of who he was. His memories were heartbreaking, his sarcasm was cutting, his devil may care attitude was infuriating and his softer side, his genuine sense of caring and wanting to change the world was all what drew her unconsciously to his side whenever he glitched into place before her.

But she had been able to ignore, up until that moment, that he was very generous on the eyes. Johnny Silverhand was straight up sexy, and she could see why so many of his fan base had been women; why his bed was never left cold for long.

Right as Cynthia enters a nondescript building to the right, V doubles over, hacking as her body betrays her again. She keeps her hands tightly pressed against her mouth even as she struggles to get a breath of air, so she can catch the silky smooth petals that spill from her. Johnny is by her side in an instant, hands hovering over her, an aura of blue surrounding him as his glitches briefly cease and he becomes more solid.

“Fuck, V. You alright?”

His hand is right there, paused over her shoulder as though he just remembered that he’s basically a hologram and can’t actually help her.

That fact hurts almost more than the petals clogging her airway do.

“I’m ok,” she grits out painfully, her voice rasping in her ears. “Just another relic malfunction.”

When she’s sure it’s done, she straightens, hands in fists as she brings them to her side. V ignores the taste of copper on her lips and the smear of blood left on her chin as she looks at him.

This time there’s no mistaking the intensity of his gaze, his sunglasses phased away as soon as the coughing had started. She stares into his warm brown eyes, so dark they are almost black, and realizes that they are close, closer than they have ever been before. If he were alive, she would be able to feel his breath on her lips, the drag of his hand down her arm, the rasp of his nylon vest against her chest. As it is, he does not breathe, cannot touch her, and gives off none of the warmth a real, living person does at this distance.

He flickers away in the next instant, perhaps realizing, as she just did, how close he had gotten to her. He’s been doing that more and more lately, for reasons she can only guess at. Getting close, talking to her in a more intimate way, looking at her when he thinks she doesn’t see him, and then pulling away or disappearing, becoming surly and closed off.

V is grateful for the reprieve of his presence in that moment as she checks her mental wall again and then lets the petals tumble from her fingers to the pavement.

They are the largest petals yet, a washed out pink bordering on red.

A red Camellia. Meaning: _you’re a flame in my heart._

_Well, that’s certainly true,_ she thinks morosely, rubbing at her burning chest as she continues to follow Cynthia.

~*~*~

Rogue calls and V goes. They storm the waterfront, but Smasher isn’t there and she doesn’t feel guilty in the slightest for gunning down the man trying to bargain for his life. Rogue is despondent when they’re finished, exuding a hopeless kind of anger she’s all too familiar with since trying to come to terms with her eventual demise. But Johnny says to leave her be so V does, raiding the containers instead.

Johnny has gone quiet in her head, although she can feel him thinking of something, like a humming in her mind, when, in the middle of looting a box for more BounceBacks she starts spluttering, a fluttering feeling dancing up her throat. The petals that spill out are slim and curled in on themselves; a gorgeous sky-blue.

Bluebells. Constancy.

As she drives off in Johnny’s newly liberated Porsche 911, the wind ripping through her hair and Johnny shouting his delight next to her, mechanical fist pumping the air, she feels nothing but peace for the first time in a long while.

~*~*~

Then comes the oilfields and a conversation that slips right past her barriers, nearly crumbling her walls as Johnny pours his fucking grief out to her.

The small inscription she makes on the dented sheet metal isn’t much but she hopes her assurance that he saved her life is worth more. He doesn't know how much he means to V already and she can feel the tell-tale burn in her throat that signals more petals.

After, she promises to call Rogue on his behalf, to set up their date, and he vanishes, she spits out small, curled, yellow petals that come to a point.

Chrysanthemum. Slighted love.

She feels small and sad and so, _so_ tired.

~*~*~

As far as she can tell, even though they share a body, it doesn’t seem as though Johnny is coughing flowers when he takes over. It’s strange to her, but then she doesn’t know how this all works, can’t look up anything about the disease without tipping Johnny off. She guesses its tied to emotion and, since he doesn’t feel as she does, it doesn’t affect him when he spends hours in the driver’s seat, so to speak.

V pretends not to know how deeply that fact cuts her.

~*~*~

She gives him the reigns when he asks, after she’s picked up Rogue and driven to the deserted drive in. She complements Rogue’s outfit, a part of her appreciating the skin on display and the other part desolate with jealousy over it. Her mental wall holds strong as she swallows the pill with a shaky hand and, when she feels herself getting muffled, she allows it, huddling behind her brick wall and muting herself to all sound or thought.

V drifts.

~*~*~

She comes to at the same theater with Johnny curtly telling her that things didn’t go well and she has to swallow down her relief before he feels it too. More and more bleed through is occurring, as well as more malfunctions. She’s honestly not sure how much time she has left. But she wants to spend every bit of it with him.

V understands when he glitches away then, sad for him even if she’s not sad at how everything played out.

The violet petals she hacks up in the car drip with crimson but they are interspersed with sprigs of vibrant green.

Loyalty and sympathy make a pretty perfect end to the day, she decides, and drives home.

~*~*~

The thing is, she's known, from day one of the relic introducing her to Johnny after that bullet to the head, that she might die. With the petals constantly pouring from her throat every day now, she knows it as an eventuality now, no matter what happens.

V can feel her body giving up on her, a fraction of a second delay where there wasn’t before earning her a bullet to the shoulder, a fuzziness to her mind that makes her hacking take longer, a lethargy to her thoughts that makes even hurling quips at Johnny less fun.

 _At the end of all this_ , she thinks, _I wouldn’t mind if Johnny did take over my body_. Surely slipping away peacefully would be better than the agony of the relic chipping away at her bit by bit.

She smiles when she can’t help but picture Johnny cruising strip bars in her body, taking shots, playing his guitar, and smoking like a chimney if the frequency of the amount of time he wills a cigarette into existence is any indication.

It wouldn’t be a happy end, but who actually gets one of those in these days and times?

The tattoo on her arm itches since it’s still healing, a heart with ‘Johnny+V’ scribbled onto her flesh.

She drags herself from bed, fingers pressing the sensitive edges of the enflamed heart. A talisman to keep her going.

~*~*~

Johnny becomes more short with her as time goes on, barely answering her questions and distracted when they’re sneaking into a new warehouse or fighting a cyberpsycho. She wants to know what crawled up his ass but is afraid that the answer will be about his breakup with Rogue and so keeps silent. Instead she keeps pushing herself to go faster and harder, blazing through side jobs and gigs and breaking up assaults like a woman possessed.

And if she has a few more scars to show for it, more visits to the ripperdocs than usual to fix herself up, then what does it truly matter? At least she can still feel something beyond the ache of her heart for Johnny and the flowers growing inside her, pressing up and out of her lungs in painful bunches.

~*~*~

V has an attack one day, unexpectedly, not that she can ever tell when these fucking fits are going to happen, and ends up curled in on herself on Jig Jig street, body spasming and her mind awash with terror that this is it, this is how she ends, not with a bang but with a pathetic whimper a few feet away from some prostitutes jeering at her and no one to even remember her passing.

But she sees Johnny phase into being above her, falling to his knees, hands passing through her forearms as he tries to halt her tremors. His eyes are blown wide with terror and he’s shouting her name, his hoarse voice breaking.

He looks beautiful, haloed by the sun above her like her own personal avenging angel. She smiles up at him through her jitters, legs kicking and arms twitching, and she can feel the blood coating her teeth, watches him blanch at the sight of it. Then a determined look crosses his features and he’s leaning down to her and, for a wild moment, she’s sure he's going to kiss her but, instead, he just sort of _sinks_ into her, without the telltale static noise that indicates his usual departure. V has all of a second to wonder what the fuck is happening and then—then---

She is shunted aside mentally. Not all the way, but she can feel their minds coming together in a way they haven’t before, interlocking like puzzle pieces. She is in her body but also not. Aware but also not in control. Her body stops spasming and she could cry with relief at a cessation from the pain. And then it gets up _without her permission_.

“It’s alright, V. You’re gonna be just fine. I’ll just take the wheel for a bit.”

It’s so strange to hear herself speaking, the words interlaced with his deeper tones, and to know that it’s not actually herself doing it. But she gratefully relinquishes control, falling back into the recesses of her mind to check on the status of her wall. When she surfaces again it’s to Johnny haggling prices with some drug and brain dance dealer in a basement somewhere. There’s an open storage unit behind the man filled with furniture, records, weapons, and, honest to god, books.

Before she can summon up any actual animosity at Johnny--because he’s taken over once again and now she finds him buying fucking drugs—her eye catches on a paperback, laying on a table near them. _The Language of Flowers,_ she reads and feels a spike of excitement before she can stop herself.

Johnny pauses in his haggling as though hearing her and, then, casually says, “How much for the dumb flower book?”

The cost is way overpriced, even if it is a real paper novel in a world where almost everything has gone digital but, instead of grumbling like he normally would when she shells out for shit he thinks is unnecessary, he gestures at the dealer and exchanges the eddies without complaint. 

The miscellaneous drugs are shoved into her backpack and she can feel the rasp of her throat, still tender from her latest malfunction. He spits on the ground and it comes out tinged with blood. He cradles the book to her chest and it feels like an apology.

~*~*~

She catches him watching her sometimes when she takes a brief moment to lie on her bed and crack open the book, popping up to lean against the wall, something soft and warm in his gaze.

She doesn’t say anything. Can’t-- with the press of petals and blood against her lips.

Neither of them need to say it but she can tell they’re both thinking it.

V is running out of time.

~*~*~

V helps River rescue his nephew and can feel the beginnings of affection for the man take root in her. He’s kind where Johnny is brusque, gentle in the way he speaks to her and yet never treats her like she’s made of glass. She thinks she could fall in love with him if it weren’t for Johnny. Thinks it would be returned by the way he regards her so openly, takes her to the top of the water tower to share the stars and city landscape with her.

It would be so easy to kiss him, to let him take her to bed and feel the warmth of another person in lieu of the one she can’t have. It would ease her loneliness, if not her condition, and she’s on the verge of it when the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She pauses as River waits for her to speak, expression hopeful, and jerks her head ever so slightly to the side, letting her hair become a curtain that hides her eyes. She sees Johnny standing just behind her, arms crossed, a new tension in his stance. He doesn’t speak to her, but she can feel the wave of anger pouring off him in waves. He’s snarling, staring at River as though he’d love to put a bullet between his eyes.

She can’t say she isn’t a little confused, he hasn’t felt like this about anyone else she’s met, not even Judy when it seemed as though things might turn hot and heavy for a while. She fixes her attention back on River and gifts him a smile that feels fake and tremulous. V makes her apologies and promises to stay in touch and, though he’s never in her direct line of sight, she knows Johnny follows her down from the water tower. He maintains his silence on the way home, the tension between them ramping higher and higher.

When she makes it to her apartment that night, she’s only just stepped over the threshold when he explodes.

“What the fuck was that, V? Gonna let any guy who wants you get close, huh? Even some pig? Were you gonna let him fuck you, too?”

V bites back her own anger and hurt at how he’s lashing out at her.

“What the hell does that matter to you, Johnny? This is still _my_ body, remember?”

He’s pacing in front of her, agitated.

“That’s not the point,” he sneers at her, whirling in place, body trembling.

She’s never been afraid of Johnny, not since that first time she awoke and he made her slam her own head into the window, threatening to flat line her there and then as she crawled to the omega blockers.

She’s faced down _Arasaka_ , the _Tyger Claws_ , _Maelstrom_ , and this whole damn _city_.

But in that moment she can’t say she isn’t a little scared. Every line of his body promises violence and she doesn’t know what he’ll do if she says something he doesn’t like.

She barrels ahead anyway.

“Then what is the fucking point? Why can’t I have sex if you’re gonna go around hooking up with Rogue and any other girl that looks our way twice?!” V screams, face flushed.

He storms up to her and she thinks he would grab her by the arms and shake her if it was possible.

“The backpack,” he snaps.

_What?_

“What?” she repeats weakly, her anger derailed in bewilderment.

“Take the medicines in there. It’ll help.”

And, with that, he vanishes.

V takes the fucking drugs and tries not to cry. When her body is overcome by wracking coughs she is unsurprised to find a bud of marigold dotted with blood at her feet.

Despair and grief sum up her entire life at this point

~*~*~

The drugs make her groggy and she sleeps through the night and next day, getting up only to piss and scarf down a burrito or two. She finds, sometimes, that items have moved she doesn’t remember touching; clothes, weapons, and money in different places than where she left them. She blames it on the medicines until she wakes one morning to the ring of her door and, when she answers it, finds a courier who hands her a box and leaves. She opens it at her desk to find three, perfectly bloomed, red roses lying within. She parts the delicate tissue paper with trembling hands to pick them up. Her palms have just wrapped around their stems when she hears static and the blue outline of Johnny’s hand curls briefly over her own. She can’t feel it, not the warmth or pressure of it, but her breath hitches all the same. He doesn’t stay, phasing out in the next second, but she feels a new bubbling warmth fill her, spreading outward from that one, passing point of contact.

_Red roses mean ‘I love you’,_ V recalls absently. They are also the number one flower gifted to all women, regardless of the occasion, according to that initial search she did online.

It makes a hell of another apology, if nothing else.

~*~*~

Meeting Alt in Cyberspace is strange, her body reduced to lines of codes with Johnny there by her side. Lines of red scroll in every direction, make up the outline of their bodies and features, but Alt is less defined than they are, her face devoid of any expression, her body a smooth continuation without the interruption of clothes.

V can feel the sorrow flow from Johnny as he speaks to her, the fact that she has been diminished so much a blow to them both. The way she speaks is so clinical, so cold, and V finds herself becoming defensive on Johnny’s behalf, leveling a glare at Alt and only speaking when she has to, not that it seems to affect Alt in any way. She can tell that Johnny knows she is displeased though and, when he catches a glimpse of her glare, she feels a flare of wonder from his mind before it is carefully stifled.

When their conversation is done and the coded world flashes away from her, she sits up from her frozen bath and vomits up two perfectly formed Edelweiss. Courage and devotion.

The Voo Doo netrunners around her make no comment, even if she sees their curious glances. She ignores them and sits in the ice with her newfound resolve burning away the lingering coldness in her limbs. When everything comes to an end she will give this body to Johnny.

~*~*~

V puts it off too long, she knows, not quite ready to leave this world behind yet. But after the meet with Hanako she can’t control her legs long enough to scrape herself off the floor of the elevator. She watches Johnny get agitated with a calmness she hasn’t ever felt before. She argues with him only to keep up pretenses, begs for more time to consider her options and then she’s choking on blood and passing out, Johnny reaching for her.

~*~*~

Waking at Vik’s is bittersweet and she has to push back a laugh when Johnny whispers the comment about being her guardian angel, remembering that time in the alley when she thought she was dying all too clearly. V has just managed to sit up, telling Vik to spit it out and tell her what’s wrong, when she sees the considering gaze leveled at her and freezes up in alarm.

“Your scans showed something else, V.” His tone brooks no arguments.

“I know, Vik. I already know,” she tells him tiredly.

“Have you considered the surgery?” He asks her, eyes hard as flint and unforgiving.

Her body goes cold.

There’s only one known cure in the world for _Hanahaki_. A surgery which removes the growth. But removing the growth removes the feelings for that person as well, a void where there was once warmth and constancy.

V shakes her head to answer him and watches him soften, pity clear in his gaze.

She’s never had a lot to her name since leaving her family, leaving the Bakkers, and coming to Night City. Sure, she has a handful of friends and she’s made herself useful to the fixers of the city but they could all move on tomorrow if she went missing. She wouldn’t begrudge any of them; the city has forced all of them to be self-sufficient to such a degree. But this love? It is hers in a way so few things have ever been. And no one can take it from her.

~*~*~

On the roof, she looks over at Night City as Johnny sits on the ledge and awaits her decision. She muffles a cough and swallows the few flowers trying to force their way up. Johnny won’t look at her.

She calls Panam, the guilt of the decision already weighing her down.

~*~*~

Panam and Saul’s plan goes perfectly and they fight their way into Arasaka from beneath its foundations. V is just thinking that maybe everything will be alright when Smasher crashes through the shutter behind them and slams his mechanized foot down, obliterating Saul’s head in a splash of ruby blood and bits of gore. Panam screams his name and there is a ringing in her ears but she forces herself to her feet and feels Johnny glitch into place next to her, almost instantly becoming a solid presence by her side. There’s a sadness lingering in the downturn of his mouth she can’t bear to witness but he is steady when he says, “Let’s finish it, V.”

So she does.

“Johnny Silverhand sends his regards.”

The recoil of the gun is satisfying.

She turns to leave when her body gives up. She can’t stop the flood of bloodied flowers pouring from her mouth, can’t hide them away as they tumble from her nerveless fingers. Her lungs burn as she is forced to her knees, each blossom so small that it seems endless as they are expelled from her body with each agonizing wretch. Johnny has gone to his own knees before her, uncharacteristically shocked silent as he watches her gasp, her eyes filled with tears, his hands fizzing against her skin as he tries to grab her by the shoulders and fails.

When it passes, she is left shaky in the aftermath, gulping down air, Johnny staring straight at her with his mouth hanging open.

She can’t help it. She laughs.

Cackling hysterically, she wraps her arms around her aching middle and Johnny seems wrenched from his stupor by the sound, the alarm clear on his face as he regards her as though she’s cracked. Hell, maybe she has.

She can feel the fear in their mind from him, overlapped with worry and a bit of something soft and, yet, warm, that slips away from her before she can examine it.

“How long?” he whispers, voice shaking.

It’s a hard question to answer but she forces herself to meet his eye as she does. “Months, now.”

He swears colorfully and she feels like laughing again. V is covered in white blossoms and blood.

“V, that’s Yarrow. Means everlastin’ love,” he tells her seriously. “I never would have given you shit if I’d known. You have to call River. Tell him right now. _Please_ , V.”

It doesn’t surprise her that he knows its meaning, their minds are so thoroughly intertwined now, emotions and thoughts crossing at the speed of light. The 'please' stuns her much more than the rest of it. _River_? He thinks it’s all for _River_? Stupid gonk.

The wall in her mind is weak when she prods at it and it doesn’t take much, merely a whisper of a thought, before it crumbles and turns to dust, revealing her true self more than words between them could.

V knows when he finds that newly open space, his eyes wide as he unknowingly reaches out mentally to fill it.

She feels it when their minds link as one, no barriers between them, the love for him blaring from that corner of her mind.

He makes a pained sound, as though the breath has been punched out of him.

“V,” he murmurs.

She forces herself to her feet and starts walking. She can’t look at Panam, who stays by her side, face ashen. She doesn’t look back at Johnny, either. 

It’s time to end this.

~*~*~

V stands before Mikoshi, Johnny having followed her every step of the way, encouraging her to go just a bit further each time, hovering over her when she tripped. But then, at last, she is jacking into the mainframe and allowing her body to sink into the coolant.

Her consciousness whisks away.

~*~*~

V walks the bridge, listening to Alt recite some passage or other and, at the end of it all, is Johnny.

“Hey, you’re here,” she says, relieved, her hand reaching out and actually grasping his shoulder. He turns to face her and his smile is so genuine it leaves her breathless in this space where there is no breath to be drawn.

“I was always gonna be there for you, V. One way or another,” he tells her and she feels as though, somehow, they have gone off script, her unintentional declaration of love for him breaking down those last fences between their clashing personalities, fostering a new peace and understanding between them.

She follows him to the table that forms into existence behind them, her hand clasped tight in his.

Alt appears and V is less upset about her use of _Soulkiller_ than she should be. Learning that she herself is just an engram now doesn’t shock her. Johnny’s upset at the fact when Alt tells them the body has been successfully overwritten to be his does, however, take her aback.

“Alt, can you give us a minute?” she asks politely and Alt’s code undulates into the ether as Johnny seethes. “Johnny, we talked about this. Keys to this body are yours. This just confirms it.”

She makes to stand but Johnny is right there before her, crushing her to him, their lines of code pressed together, his arms holding her tight to him. She clutches back just as tightly, burying her face into his chest and trying to dispel the sorrow of saying goodbye this way.

“No, V. It’s not what we agreed. You go back and get the surgery. Fight it. Find a way to reverse the chip. You and Panam could do it.”

She pushes him back, just a little, so she can peer up at his face, his eyes just as intense here as they were in the real world.

“Johnny, it’s the end of the line for me. You heard Alt. I’m dying one way or another. Take the body. Live for me.” V smiles up at him, but it’s a delicate, broken thing that sits on her face wrong.

“I refuse,” he tells her fiercely. “I’m not gonna take your body, V, I never was. Waking up to your face every day, knowin’ I killed you? It would kill me too.”

She shakes her head. “You’d move on, Johnny. I know you would. Go set the world on fire like you did before.”

“Dammit, no! I can’t-- not from this. You _know_ why.”

V extricates herself from his embrace with difficulty, keeping him away with her arms extended before her, planted in the center of his chest as he keeps leaning towards her. She’s avoided looking straight at him since they got here and finds she can’t summon the courage to do so, even now.

“This was why I tried to hide it from you. I never wanted my love to hold you back from anything.”

He catches her wrists with one hand and reels her in, tipping her head back with his mechanized fingers so that their eyes lock. His expression seems indecipherable at first, the lines of his mouth grim.

“I can’t do it because I love you too, V. Since nearly the beginning.”

She searches his face frantically for any hint of deception but he just lets her look her fill, lips quirking into a sweet smile, eyes crinkling with it. He lets go of her wrists to cup her face and bring it to his. Their lips meet and, although there is no warmth or pressure, she can still feel the connection, the touch of their lips moving together, and sighs into it. They break apart gently and he touches his forehead to hers, eyes so tender as they gaze at her.

“And I won’t let it hold you back either. Go back and find a cure, V.”

V closes her eyes and savors the feeling of his hands on her, of finally being able to touch. She takes a breath she doesn’t need and relishes how clear it feels, no flowers to choke her. She opens her eyes and takes a second to marvel at this space they are sequestered in, red lines of code flowing around them, twitching into different spots and making up every curve of their bodies, down to their clothes and hair.

She thinks, staring at the man before her who died for love once and is offering to do it again. Thinks of climbing into the well, having the surgery, finding a cure, and living out the rest of her days traveling with the Aldecados, Panam at her side. No Johnny. No irritable demands to have a smoke, no poking fun at her ridiculous outfit combinations, no commentary on her day to day activities as he follows her around. And she thinks _no_.

“No,” she tells him, laughing when he frowns at her. “I’m not leaving.”

“V, I already told you, I’m not goin’ to—“

“And you’re not going either,” she interrupts, smile so wide she feels her cheeks may tear.

He simply stares at her, apparently lost for words, as she brings a hand up to touch his cheek, thumb tracing the corner of his eye, where that small crinkle appeared when he had grinned at her. When he had been happy.

“We’ll stay together,” she tells him, before turning her head to the side and shouting out “Alt!” into the void around them.

Alt appears, floating before them serenely as usual, arms outstretched and code still undulating.

“It appears that you have reached a decision,” Alt informs her blandly.

“I have. You said that you’ll take everyone beyond the Blackwell and absorb those trapped in Mikoshi. Could you escort me and Johnny across and then leave us there? Separate from all of you?”

There is a pause and V gets the impression that she has managed to astonish Alt.

“The right to a choice you have earned, through will and endeavor. I will grant your request, if that is what you wish.”

She extends an arm and a bridge appears next to the other, a pale blue light exuding at its end.

“Whaddya say, Johnny? Wanna set a new world on fire with me?”

V only just manages to finish her sentence before he’s kissing her again, a new energy in his movements.

“Fuck, V, you sure?” he says shakily. “No goin’ back this time. Can’t save you again.”

“Once was enough,” she murmurs. “Let’s go. Together?”

“Together,” he affirms.

They stand, for once, as equals, and walk the length of the bridge.

Tumbling down the other side and feeling bits of herself whirl away, awash in blue, V never looks away from him and he never looks away from her.

And, maybe, for people like her, in a city like this, there should be no happy ending.

Looks like she found one anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Song is Heat Waves by Glass Animals. Dedicated to Yef.


End file.
